“Opportunistic Capitulation”: For The GOP, Spending Cuts For Thee But Not For Me, Because It’s Different This Time
But this time it’s different…
How many times have we heard those words – not as an apology for past mistakes but as a justification for one’s current actions?
It seems the GOP excels at this justification. Whether it be championing spending cuts, but then seeking to restore funding for the Federal Aviation Administration because “it’s different when they have to wait in line at the airport,” or Michelle Bachman decrying Obama’s stimulus package as “fantasy economics” and an “orgy” of government spending, but then being the first to request funding to stimulate projects in her home state of Minnesota. Ah yes, it’s just “so different.”
Recently, we saw two more such examples of opportunistic capitulating. In 2008, Senator James Inhofe, R-Okla., bragged in a press release after then-President Bush declared 24 Oklahoma counties eligible for disaster aid due to severe weather, “I am pleased that the people whose lives have been affected by disastrous weather are getting much-needed federal assistance.” But four years later he voted to deny emergency funding for those areas affected by Hurricane Sandy.
Then, when confronted with the prospect of providing federal disaster aid money to those decimated in Moore, Oklahoma following the devastating tornado, Inhofe pledged his unqualified support, stating on MSNBC that unlike Sandy, this is “totally different.” Really? When Americans lose their homes, possessions and livelihood due to uncontrolled natural forces, I didn’t think there really was a difference or justification for politicians to pick and choose the winners and losers.
And then there’s Rep. Stephen Fincher, R-Tenn., who was elected on the tea party platform vowing to reform government such as farm programs and cut wasteful spending. During the recent House Agriculture Committee’s markup of the Farm Bill, he lived up to his promise and voted to cut $20 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program – formerly known as food stamps – but then turned around and SUPPORTED an increase and expansion of crop insurance subsidies by $9 billion over the next 10 years.
In committee, he claimed that SNAP funding, which goes to those whose income is below 130 percent of the federal poverty line, (mainly children, elderly and military retirees), is stealing “other people’s money that Washington is appropriating and spending,” but yet, somehow, he has no issue spending “other’s people money” to fund crop insurance subsides because they are “so different.”
The kicker: According to research by the Environment Working Group, Fincher is the second most heavily subsidized farmer in Congress and one of the largest subsidy recipients in Tennessee history. From 1999 to 2012, Fincher received $3.48 million in crop insurance subsidies.
I guess the rule-of-thumb is when it affects your personal bottom line – either financially or by impacting your prospective political longevity, things truly are different.
By: Penny Lee, U. S. News and World Report, May 29, 2013
“Another Fringe Activitist”: Shock-Jock Publicity Seeker Darrell Issa’s Summer Fun Already Underway
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus was on “Fox & Friends” yesterday, fielding questions about various ongoing political controversies, when he said something interesting. In reference to the chairman on the House Oversight Committee, Priebus boasted, “I’ve got a good feeling that Darrell Issa is going to have quite a summer.”
As it turns out, Issa’s summer fun is already underway.
Several top aides to Hillary Rodham Clinton, the former secretary of state, are targets of the latest subpoena for information about the drafting of talking points after the siege last fall on an American compound in Benghazi, Libya.
Representative Darrell Issa, the California Republican who is the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, wrote in a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry that the Obama administration’s refusal to cooperate fully with a House investigation left him “with no alternative but to compel the State Department to produce relevant documents through a subpoena.”
What do you know, it really is 1997 all over again — a far-right chairman of the House Oversight Committee, hoping to undermine a Clinton, is needlessly sending out subpoenas over a trumped up political controversy.
The attack on the U.S. outpost in Benghazi was a deadly national security crisis, which left four Americans killed, but the effort to create a political “scandal” has run its course. Indeed, it effectively ended a couple of weeks ago with the release of internal administration emails that helped prove that the White House’s claims were accurate; there was no cover-up; and Republican accusations are without foundation in fact. It’s reached the point at which House GOP staffers are mocking their own party’s nonsense on this issue.
So why is Issa issuing subpoenas to Clinton aides anyway? Largely because, as the chair of the Republican National Committee put it, Issa is eager to “have quite a summer.”
If this seems eerily familiar, there’s a good reason for that — Issa is following in Dan Burton’s footsteps.
Remember Burton and his wildly unhealthy hatred for President Clinton?
Burton was at his most famous in the 1990’s, when he led many of the investigations against President Bill Clinton. “If I could prove 10 percent of what I believe happened, he’d [Clinton] be gone,” Burton declared in 1998. “This guy’s a scumbag. That’s why I’m after him.”
Over the last six years of Bill Clinton’s presidency, Burton led the House Government Reform Committee and unilaterally issued 1,089 subpoenas to investigate allegations of misconduct. That roughly translates to an average of a politically-inspired subpoena every other day for six consecutive years, including weekends, holidays, and congressional recesses.
Burton once held hearings — for 10 days — on the Clintons’ Christmas card list. He ended up targeting 141 different Clinton administration officials with subpoenas, including at least one instance in which Burton and his staff were so reckless, they subpoenaed the wrong person (they were looking for someone with a similar name).
Burton also fired a bullet into a “head-like object” — reportedly a melon — in his backyard to test the theory that former White House counsel Vincent Foster was murdered.
Burton, of course, wasn’t just some shock-jock or publicity-hungry provocateur; he was the chairman of a congressional committee with oversight authority over the White House. And he wielded that gavel as if he were a fringe activist with a chip on his shoulder.
The Indiana Republican has since left Congress, but his legacy remains. Indeed, his successor on the House Oversight Committee is picking up where Burton left off.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, May 29, 2013
“Between A Rock And A Stupid Place”: The Medicaid Scandal Of State Level Republicans
As the reality of states refusing the insanely generous terms of the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion (viz., the Texas legislature’s proactive legislation prohibiting the state from participating), begin to sink in, with it comes the realization that a completely perverse situation will now prevail in these states. The New York Times‘ Robert Pear explains for anyone who hasn’t heard:
More than half of all people without health insurance live in states that are not planning to expand Medicaid.
People in those states who have incomes from the poverty level up to four times that amount ($11,490 to $45,960 a year for an individual) can get federal tax credits to subsidize the purchase of private health insurance. But many people below the poverty line will be unable to get tax credits, Medicaid or other help with health insurance.
You will occasionally hear that people left exposed by states refusing to expand Medicaid are “covered” by Obamacare health insurances exchanges, and that’s true for what little it’s worth. The subsidies designed to make coverage affordable for the working poor (and a big chunk of the middle class), however, don’t kick in until a beneficiary’s income is above the federal poverty line. That’s because it did not occur to the Affordable Care Act’s sponsors that the Medicaid expansion provisions covering all Americans up to the poverty line would become voluntary for the states. And you know what? Had they known the Supreme Court was going to so rule, they probably would have thought no state would hate its own poor people enough to turn down the fiscal deal represented by the expansion (that was certainly the assumption a lot of otherwise smart observers made when the Court’s decision came down). Turns out as many as 25 states may in fact go in that stupid and malevolent direction, leaving up to 5.7 million Americans at the very heart of Obamacare’s intended coverage population without meaningful access to health insurance.
Now normally you’d think a Court-created “hole” in a legislative plan of this size would lead to a legislative “fix,” wouldn’t you? But that is for sure not happening until such time as Democrats regain control of the House and of 60 Senate seats–the temporary majorities that made enactment of the Affordable Care Act over the united opposition of the GOP possible in the first place.
The scandal of state-level Republicans leaving so much federal money on the table and so many poor people in the lurch may well become a campaign issue in 2014. But while this treachery is very likely to become a long-term political issue for Republicans in the affected states–particularly in the South, where its racial dimensions are impossible to ignore–the overall landscape going into the 2014 midterm election is hardly promising for Democrats there or nationally.
So putting things right and holding the happy architects of this wildly unfair situation may take a good long while. But payback’s hell.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, May 28, 2013
“Let The Excitement Begin”: Virginia GOP Continues Its Sprint From The Mainstream
E.W. Jackson, the Republicans’ candidate for lieutenant governor in Virginia this year, is on record saying quite a few nutty things. Late last week, however, Jackson effectively said his bizarre rhetorical excesses shouldn’t be held against him.
The comments, he said, “were spoken in my role as a minister, not as a candidate.”
I don’t mean to sound picky, but when someone seeks elected office, the things he or she did before becoming a candidate still count.
Meanwhile, Bob FitzSimmonds, a former aide to gubernatorial nominee Ken Cuccinelli and a top official in the Republican Party of Virginia, said last week, “I’m not a big fan of contraception, frankly. I think there are some issues, we’re giving morning-after pills to 12-year-olds, and pretty soon I guess we’ll hand them out to babies, I don’t know.”
Why would anyone give emergency contraception to a baby? I don’t know, but apparently this GOP official and close Cuccinelli ally is concerned about it. (FitzSimmonds also made headlines last fall for talking about his belief that President Obama is going “to hell.”)
So, let’s take stock. Virginia’s Republican gubernatorial candidate is a fierce culture warrior; Virginia’s Republican candidate for lieutenant governor is an unusually strange right-wing activist; Virginia’s Republican candidate for state attorney general once sponsored a bill that would have required women to report their miscarriages to the state; and Virginia’s Republican Party is led in part by someone who still opposes contraception.
Oh, and Virginia’s current Republican governor is embroiled in a scandal.
All of this is important when considering which party will have greater success reaching out to independents, moderates, and swing voters with no real party allegiance, but there’s also the matter of waking up the Democratic base. It’s an off-year cycle, and Democratic Party leaders have long wondered how they’ll generate sufficient levels of excitement among progressive voters to show up.
It appears GOP activists in the commonwealth are taking care of that problem.
By: Steve Benen, The Madow Blog, May 28, 2013
“Can Dish It Out, But Can’t Take It”: The Republican Delusion, Free Speech Includes The Right To Be Free From Criticism
The GOP is a “party of crybabies.” Or so says Jonathan Bernstein in yesterday’s Salon, reprieving one of my biggest pet peeves, which is the presumption by conservatives that freedom of speech entails freedom from criticism for one’s opinions – no matter how absurd or obscene those opinions might be.
The reason this matters is that one important measure of the health of a democracy is the quality of its public discourse and debate. Politics, after all, is the process by which unlike groups sort out their differences.
“I’m Okay, You’re Okay” sounds harmless enough. But inside the velvet glove of the right wing’s democratic-sounding assertion that we are all entitled to our own opinions and that all opinions should therefore be equally tolerated and respected is the iron fist of an authoritarian mindset that presumes when one group – typically theirs – seeks to demean or marginalize some other group there is not a damn thing the rest of us can do about it but grin and bear it.
On the contrary, the entire justification for freedom of speech in a liberal democracy, and why it is one of our cardinal political values – enshrined in the very First Amendment of our Constitution — is that free speech provides the foundation for open and robust debate, for a marketplace of ideas, for the sifting process of political give-and-take that sorts the wheat of what is true from the chaff of what is false.
Debate defines the mental habits and values — the character — at the core of what Walter Lippmann called the “traditions of civility” which separate Western democratic political institutions from all others that have existed throughout history.
Yet, we know that right wing conservatives do not believe in free and open debate or subscribe to Lippmann’s traditions of civility, or at the end of the day believe in free speech at all for any but themselves and likeminded true believers, because of their hysterical reaction to requirements like the long-dead Fairness Doctrine that do nothing more than guarantee opposing ideas equal time.
What right wing conservatives want in the end, says Bernstein, is not the freedom to speak and compete as participants in a democracy but the freedom to monopolize the means of communication, to proselytize without interruption, to propagandize without rebuttal, to transmit whatever angry, hateful, insulting and offensively anti-social messages they choose without censure.
In this way, conservatives hope the larger society will eventually conform, by a process of relentless repetition and attrition, to their reactionary notions of what a proper society ought to look like.
And so, says Bernstein, “it’s time to call out” Republicans for their belief that “democracy” means giving them “the supposed right to be free from criticism.”
Such “epistemic closure” might be popular inside the “faith-based community’s” closed-information loop, he says, “but it’s a nasty idea that sorts exceptionally badly with democratic politics.”
Thus, to right wing conservatives, it was far less offensive for immigration “expert” Jason Richwine of the Heritage Foundation to call blacks and Hispanics mentally deficient than it was for Richwine’s critics to call him a “racist.”
The mainstreaming of extremism begins with the absurd — and very unconservative assumption — that in some way all ideas are created equal, or that standards do not exist for identifying and ostracizing wrong or deeply offensive ones.
Thus, we are logically led to a conviction popular with conservatives these days that “the accusation of racism is one of the worst things that anyone can call you in public life,” as Richwine himself pleads, for “once that word is out there, it’s very difficult to recover from it, even when it is completely untrue.”
Yet, someone with more imagination than Richwine might imagine even worse things to be called than “racist,” counters Bernstein. “For example, someone could be called a member of an intellectually inferior race, genetically doomed to always be looking up to those races that have superior intelligence. But pointing that out would no doubt violate Richwine’s standards of civilized political discourse.”
The same goes for Christian fundamentalists. With them, calling homosexuality a crime against nature and a sin against God barely registers on their Outrage-o-Meter. What really stings is to call these anti-gay holy-rollers “bigots.” Indeed, it’s the liberal critics of religious anti-gay critics who are the real bigots, according to these right wing fundamentalists, because it’s liberals who are persecuting the devout for offenses no more sinful than defending their Judeo-Christian traditional family values.
Similarly, notes Bernstein, the Republican response to the Democratic rhetoric of a “war on women” wasn’t so much that the substance of Democratic charges was wrong, since Republicans made no effort to offer a point-by-point substantive rebuttal. It was, rather, as one Republican Congressman put it, that the criticism of conservatives itself was “repugnant.”
No wonder the perpetually put-upon Peggy Noonan is always shaking her well-coiffed head and sighing her by now-famous sigh and asking why do President Obama and the Democrats always seem to be picking so many disagreeable fights?
Even more telling, says Bernstein, was Mitch McConnell’s “epic” op-ed in the Washington Post this week, in which McConnell claimed the First Amendment was imperiled by the Obama campaign’s “explicit attacks on groups and other private citizens” in 2012.
How so? Because the Obama campaign published opposition research on big Mitt Romney donors on its website, says Bernstein. There were no claims from Republicans that the information on the website was false. One Romney big-money donor singled out did in fact pour millions of dollars into anti-gay rights crusades. Neither were their claims that criticism of Republicans was linked in any way to their harassment at the hands of federal agencies in the same way Richard Nixon once ordered the IRS to target those on his “enemies list.”
No, for McConnell, the truly offensive thing about Democratic criticism was that it occurred at all.
For McConnell, such criticism is all part of “the left-wing playbook: Expose your opponents to public view, release the liberal thugs and hope the public pressure or unwanted attention scares them from supporting causes you oppose.”
What McConnell objects to, in short, is the possibility that billionaire businessmen who bankroll Republicans or other far right causes might face retaliation from their customers exercising their own First Amendment rights of free speech and free assembly to organize boycotts of right wing businessmen whose politics or causes they oppose.
That’s what McConnell cannot abide: The idea that the plutocrats he supports — the upper crust, the ruling class, the New American Oligarchy — might in any way be inconvenienced or held accountable through the normal channels of democratic give-and-take for their exercise of political power.
McConnell and fellow plutocrats like Mitt Romney think members of their class ought to be able to pull strings anonymously, surreptitiously, “quietly behind closed doors,” without the public being any the wiser or able to retaliate in any way.
“The First Amendment was written to protect speech that was not popular,” said McConnell, cynically twisting the meaning of one of America’s fundamental democratic rights to suit his own self-serving purpose, which is to revive a new Gilded Age Plutocracy. “The American people need to remain vigilant against any effort by the powerful to stifle speech.”
That means, as Bernstein points out, keeping speech as anonymous and immune from criticism as possible.
That idea is not only “nuts,” says Bernstein, it is also “deeply anti-democratic.” We should all be careful in democratic politics to avoid questioning other people’s motives, he says. But there is nothing wrong with taking note of whose interests are being served in politics or questioning who benefits from a particular policy.
“Indeed, there’s nothing wrong with the press using those donors as a shorthand way of informing citizens which interests are represented by the various candidates, or for those candidates to make a point of which interests finance their opponents,” he says.
Recent liberal complaints about conservative criticisms have been limited to legitimate concerns about their accuracy, as in the phony idea that 47% of the population is a parasitic class of “takers” who pay no taxes. Liberal complaints of conservative behavior have also focused on their decency, as when Sandra Fluke was slandered as a “slut” for offending right wing talk radio fat man Rush Limbaugh when she testified publicly for birth control benefits under the Affordable Care Act.
Free speech and democracy are inextricably linked, says Bernstein, and so “the Republican delusion” that free speech includes the right to be free from criticism is, therefore, “quite destructive.”
It’s destructive because right wing conservatives think they have the latitude to attack ethnic groups without the risk of being called out for their racist comments, says Bernstein, or to dominate campaigns financially without the risk anyone will notice who really runs the country.
Democracy and secrecy – or silence — don’t mix. But that is what Republicans think they are entitled to under their contorted definition of what “democracy” entails.
It’s long been said that if ever government of, by and for the people were to perish from this earth, it is likely to be done in from within – by those who had grown weary of its disciplines of liberality, disinterestedness and broad-mindedness or found that popular government did not serve their selfish, parochial interests.
That’s why this debate over free speech matters, and why it’s important we understand its meaning. With their dangerous assertion that criticism of conservative ideas imposes an intolerable contraction of their First Amendment rights, political reactionaries like Mitch McConnell have once again unfurled a rich liberal tapestry of individual freedoms, liberties and democratic rights as a cloak for autocracy and authoritarianism.
By: Ted Frier, Open Salon Blog, May 26, 2013
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